Solitude's Perks
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: He isn't one to intervene and she isn't one to speak up. Gary Barkovitch/Carrie White, T for language.


**uh i was sad so i wrote this**

**disclaimer: none of stephen king's works belong to me.**

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She's always walking by herself.

Sometimes people laugh or whisper when she walks by, but somehow she gives an air of not really hearing. As though she's almost drifting, like some sort of lost spirit that hasn't yet settled down.

And Carrie White feels like a ghost. Like somehow she's dead and yet she has to look upon her own life for a little longer, awhile longer, years longer. Punishment, she thinks. Because she's been bad. She isn't going to heaven, but she isn't going to hell either.

She's just alone, destined to walk through the remains of her life for the rest of eternity. And she thinks she'd prefer it that way, if she had some inkling of what she really was. Maybe if she was really dead, she'd enjoy looking back at the world of the living.

But right now, the world of the living is where all her problems stem from.

"Hey, freak. D'you even own a goddamn hairbrush?"

"I bet she doesn't even bathe," somebody whispers.

Carrie stares down at her shoes, suddenly very aware of how thick and heavy her skirt is. It's right, she tells herself. She's dressing right. It's everybody else who's wrong.

"C'mon, don't you know it's rude to ignore me?" Her attacker is a tall, skinny boy with copious amounts of forehead acne and a wicked-looking grin plastered across his face.

She nods, whispering an affirmative and trying not to look him in the eyes. The boy laughs and pushes her, getting her feet tangled in her various petticoats and sending her books flying onto the ground.

"Are you even going to get up?" He laughs again.

The words _leave me alone _rise in her throat but somehow she doesn't know how to form them. Carrie pulls herself up hastily and staggers slightly, tripping again and hitting her small frame against the edge of the lockers.

A chorus of laughter rises in the other students in the hallway. Carrie's face reddens and she stoops down to pick up her books, only to find that they aren't there.

The boy from before is dangling them just over her head, like teasing a dumb dog with treats. "C'mon, take them from me, you little freak." She reaches up, only to have them quickly whisked out of her reach.

The boy is obviously about to say something else when the books are snatched out of his hands by a small, dark one. "Christ, you're all disgusting. Just let the kid alone."

Carrie's rescuer is a slight, olive-skinned boy in an oversized sweatshirt. His dark eyes are calculating and fairly emotionless. Thankfully, none of his scrutinizing seems to be in her direction.

"Oh, look, we've got both of the fucking freaks in the same place."

"Just lay off it. Punch me or whatever shit, but leave the girl alone." Carrie watches, wide-eyed and somewhat curious.

The boy chuckles and slams his smaller victim against a locker. He doesn't even wince, and Carrie has to wonder how people like that work. People who just pretend they don't feel anything at all and eventually it starts to ring true.

Eventually the group of boys and bystanders starts to thin out, and it's only Carrie and the unnamed boy. A bit of blood trickles from his nose and he seems a little bruised. And somehow Carrie finds it in her to whisper, "Are you alright?" It's hushed and hoarse, but it's talking.

"Speak up a little," the boy mutters, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Happens all the time. Who're you, anyways?" He offers his hand to her, and Carrie hesitates for a moment, her mother's voice ringing in her head. _Boys are filthy, dirty creatures that only want to violate you. _

"Carrie White," she says as loudly as she can muster, and takes his hand.

"Gary Barkovitch." Gary Barkovitch picks up her books for her and hands them to her. She stuffs them in her bag, still looking down.

"Thank you." Her voice is still soft and afraid, like if she speaks up too much somebody will hear. It's always been that way, she thinks. She's afraid of being heard. Not like this Gary boy, who doesn't seem to know how not to be heard.

"No problem." He looks like he's going to leave, but something in Carrie wants to cry and plead with him to stay. Maybe some of it seeped into her expression, because then he says, "Where's your house? Christ, I guess the best I could do for you would be to walk you back there."

She pales immediately. Her mother. Her mother is back home. But it would beat being alone, just to have the strange boy next to her. "That would be nice," she says slowly.

"Alright, c'mon, then."

He slings his bag back over his shoulders and starts down the hallway. Carrie follows, having to take two steps for every one Barkovitch takes. He's not large or anything, he just walks quicker than anybody she's ever seen.

They walk like that for a bit, just the two of them and the sleepy silence of Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie looks down at her feet and Barkovitch stares off into space. After about four minutes of silence, he blurts out "You know what, Carrie?" She looks up at him expectantly. "They hate me too. I've gotten used to it, I mean, but all the goddamn whispers and taunts and god, it gets exhausting sometime. You've gotta ignore it, though, 'cause, I mean, you're you and you're better than they are."

She doesn't say anything for a few seconds. "You think so?"

"I'm fucked up enough that I don't really take my own advice, I deserve every goddamn thing I get. But you, you just...Christ, I don't even know. But you don't deserve it."

The best that Carrie can come up with is a feeble, "Thank you." It's probably not even audible. Her voice has gotten to be so soft that even in silence it's blocked out.

"Listen, if you ever need somebody to...I don't know, watch your back or something." Barkovitch is looking up, like he doesn't really believe himself. "Like, I know I'm not the type of guy anybody would want to fuckin' be around, but if you ever need it, I'm around."

"Thank you," she says again. "I don't...I don't know how to..." She trails off.

"I get it," Barkovitch responds. Carrie sighs and before she knows it, Gary Barkovitch has his arm around her. It's nice, in the cold, to feel somebody else's warmth. She feels her body tingling, and she shivers slightly because it's so _wrong _that it starts to feel right to her.

"My house is just the next one down," she says. She sounds almost normal, and somehow Carrie White feels normal in this instance.

"Alright." The light is on, and Carrie expects him to say something about the state of the house. "Not a very happy place, is it?"

"No." She gives a quiet laugh and slips out from under his arm. "Goodbye. Thank you." The words almost sound scared to her. She hears the sound of her mother making her way to the door and she starts to hurry to it, but for a reason she can't think of, Carrie looks back and realizes that Gary Barkovitch is smiling at her.

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**i never realized how much i was in love with these two together until now**


End file.
